# The 12 Best Literary Novels of the 1990s

> Doorstop epics sit beside slim campus thrillers, and critics and cult readers disagree on the order.

*By YPB Team · Published October 16, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-12-best-literary-novels-of-the-1990s*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Infinite Jest** — score 1000/1000
   David Foster Wallace's 1996 sprawling novel of addiction, tennis and entertainment.
2. **Fight Club** — score 666/1000
   Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 transgressive cult novel.
3. **Disgrace** — score 444/1000
   J. M. Coetzee's 1999 Booker winner on post-apartheid South Africa.
4. **Underworld** — score 444/1000
   Don DeLillo's 1997 Cold War epic that opens on a baseball game.
5. **American Pastoral** — score 363/1000
   Philip Roth's 1997 Pulitzer winner on a family undone by the 1960s.
6. **The English Patient** — score 363/1000
   Michael Ondaatje's 1992 lyrical wartime novel set in an Italian villa.
7. **The Secret History** — score 363/1000
   Donna Tartt's 1992 campus murder tale told in retrospect.
8. **The Shipping News** — score 266/1000
   Annie Proulx's 1993 Pulitzer winner about a Newfoundland newspaperman.
9. **The God of Small Things** — score 266/1000
   Arundhati Roy's 1997 Booker winner set in Kerala.
10. **The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle** — score 266/1000
   Haruki Murakami's 1994 surreal search for a missing wife.
11. **Possession** — score 266/1000
   A. S. Byatt's 1990 literary-detective romance.
12. **A Suitable Boy** — score 0/1000
   Vikram Seth's 1993 doorstop of postcolonial India.

Tags: books, 90s, fiction